


Off the Record

by E_Salvatore



Series: Nobody Needs to Know [1]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: F/M, Technically canon-compliant, as in 'you can't prove this didn't happen', missing scene from 202
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5899888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E_Salvatore/pseuds/E_Salvatore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She arrives in Chicago as a journalist, concerned friend and something more.</p><p>She leaves Chicago as a journalist, co-conspirator and nothing more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off the Record

“Please – sit down.”

She slides mechanically into the chair Strand has just gestured at, wide eyes still transfixed upon the sight of him after months of going without.

If she hadn’t been in so much shock, Alex would probably have had a bigger reaction to his ominous words. Instead, the words _I need your help_ merely ring in her ears and echo within her mind, punctuated by the dull thud of Ruby shutting the door behind her to give them some privacy.

With the outside world muffled by Strand’s heavy mahogany door, a sudden silence descends upon them. It’s deafening, but Alex can’t bring herself to pierce through it. Her eyes drink in the sight of Strand, cataloguing the changes in his appearance. He seems to be doing the same.

In the back of her mind, she takes note of his clothes, the bags under his eyes, the untrimmed facial hair so at odds with his usually meticulous personal grooming habits. An image flashes, unbidden, of her catching his eye in the mirror while he shaves and she attempts to tame her bed head. A memory, one of a dozen similar occurrences.

One best not thought of right now.

“I’ve been calling,” Alex finally says, initiating a conversation in the hopes that it will put an end to _that_ particular train of thought.

Strand’s gaze doesn’t waver, eyes fixed upon hers as he delivers a flimsy excuse. “I’ve been busy.”

She doesn’t like the way it sounds, doesn’t like the way he’s just dismissed _three months_ of missed calls and countless voice messages and a string of particularly embarrassing and regrettable texts her drunk self had seen fit to send him on Christmas Eve. But just this once, because it’s been three months and they’re both exhausted and she doesn’t want to fight – just this once, she’ll let it slide.

“I can see that.” She says instead, giving him a pointed look as she inclines her head in the direction of one of the more complex-looking conspiracy walls.

There’s no rush to defend himself, to explain this worrying display of his descent into madness. Instead, Strand furrows his brows at the sight of her recorder still in hand, fingers tightly curled around it ever since she'd snatched it off Ruby’s desk and proceeded to make her way here.

“Could you turn that off?”

“What?” In all the months they’ve known each other ( _months_ , her mind marvels, _months and not years_ ), Strand has never once made that particular request of her. At most, he’d gently nudge her with a casual question, something along the lines of _are you still recording_? And even that had happened only a handful of times, because Strand understands enough of journalism and their professional relationship to know that she’s the one who gets to decide what should and shouldn’t be recorded.

“The recorder,” He clarifies impatiently, as if that’s the root of her confusion. They both know it isn’t. Sensing her hesitation, Strand presses on. “I want to speak with you, but this has to be off the record.”

Alex already knows how this will play out. The trip might have been written off as a work expense but she’s here as a friend, above all. And Strand clearly needs someone to talk to.

Still, a token effort needs to be made. “It’s just,” She glances at the device clutched within her fingers, a familiar constant she has come to rely upon to help her separate _Doctor Strand_ from _Richard_ , to separate the man who dismisses all of her theories and findings and fears from the man who lets her babble about the most random things until they both fall asleep. Without the recorder to hold her back, who knows what she might do? “I don’t know how it’ll look-”

“Please,” Strand insists. Her breath catches when he reaches out for her free hand. “Please,” He says again, and it’s not like she’s never heard him say _please_ , not like Richard Strand is the rude asshole everyone makes him out to be. She’s _heard_ him say please a hundred times… she’s just never _seen_ him communicate that word so clearly with just his eyes.

“I’ll explain once the recorder is off.” He assures her, his voice gentler now as he tries to draw her in with promises of answers and explanations.

“Is it about Coralee?” Alex presses. “Charlie?”

Strand laces their fingers together and exerts the slightest amount of pressure.

 _Please_.

He says nothing as she turns off the recorder with a heavy sigh, relegating it to the far end of his desk for now.

“So,” Alex starts, only to falter when Strand pulls his hand out of hers and draws it back to his side of the desk. She quickly drops both hands into her lap, choosing to shrug off the realization that it stings to have him draw away so easily after the first real contact they’ve had in three months. “So,” She clears her throat. “What’s going on?”

It doesn’t escape her notice, the way Strand’s eyes flit about the room like a paranoid conspiracy nut checking the room for bugs. “What I’m about to tell you,” He says quietly, carefully, “must stay between us, and only us. Do you understand?”

Frankly, she’s insulted that he would even feel the need to ask.

“Of course.”

Strand nods, and then his eyes slide close for just a moment. A tired sigh escapes him as he pinches the bridge of his nose.

Finally, he presents to her these words (framed as a fact, an unquestionable statement): “Thomas Warren is dead.”

She’s speechless, long enough for Strand to return his gaze to her with a worried frown on his lips. “Alex?”

“I’m fine,” She waves off his concern. “Okay. Alright. Go on.”

At least he seems appreciative of the fact that she isn’t questioning him just yet. In truth, she wouldn’t even know where to start. It’s probably best to wait and see how much Strand is willing to offer her before she starts pressing for answers.

“It all happened so long ago, and I wasn’t exactly in my right mind back then,” Strand easily admits. “But I know what… _who_ I saw. When you pointed him out on the TV three months ago, I knew instantly that I’d seen Thomas Warren before, that I knew him from somewhere. But it took me a while to place him.”

He pauses to shoot her a wary look, as if checking to make sure she’s still with him. Alex nods at him to go on.

“A year after Coralee went missing, I went back.” Strand sighs, dragging a heavy hand down his face. “I don’t know why. I don’t know what I was expecting. But I drove back out there, on the road that was supposed to lead us to Big Sur. I left my car on the side of the road, and I walked into the forest, the same spot where Charlie and I started our search.  Like I said: I don’t know what I was expecting.”

This time, his pause lasts just a beat too long. Alex reluctantly speaks up, unwilling to lose him to his thoughts. “But?” She prompts.

Strand tenses, for just a second, when her voice calls his wandering mind back to the present. “But,” He echoes. “It most definitely wasn’t a dead body in the middle of a clearing.”

For all that he teases her about her love for drama and her knack for timing huge reveals _just right_ to create maximum impact, Strand himself is pretty good at this. She must’ve rubbed off on him.

“Hang on,” Alex can’t help but interrupt, her mind spinning with possibilities. “This wouldn’t happen to be the body of Thomas Warren, would it?”

There’s a brief pause; she can’t help but wonder if it’s for dramatic effect. “As a matter of fact,” Strand’s features seem deliberately devoid of any expression. “It is. It was,” He quickly amends.

“Oh my- wait,” She says, more to herself than Strand. Now would be a bad time to get ahead of herself, to get caught up in his claims. “How sure are you?”

“When I found him,” Strand bristles at her questioning him, but offers up more details to persuade her anyway. “He was on his stomach. The first thing I noted was a birthmark on the back of his neck. One of the few personal details known about Thomas Warren is that he was born with a distinct mark on the back of his neck.”

“So,” Alex draws out the single syllable, buying herself some time to study Strand. Despite all the conspiracy nut jokes she’s cracked (filed aside for possible use on the podcast), she knows with absolute certainty that he hasn’t actually snapped. She sees a tired man, maybe even a vulnerable man – but not a crazy man. “Pretty sure, then.”

Strand spares her a nod of acknowledgment before he goes on. “I didn’t have my phone with me at the time, so I retraced my steps to the road and flagged down a passing car. The driver agreed to call the police. After some haggling, he also agreed to tell them he had been the one to find the body.”

So he’d paid the man off to leave his name out of it. “Was that a good idea?” Alex asks warily. Strand might have had nothing to do with the murder of Thomas Warren but if someone were to catch wind of this and deem his actions to be suspicious…

“At the time, yes,” Strand tells her decisively. “The police had cleared me of any possible involvement in Coralee’s disappearance but you can imagine how it would have looked like, for me to turn up with a dead body at the exact same spot my wife went missing a year ago. At the very least, it would have garnered me even more unwanted publicity.”

It’s easy to see where this is going. “And worst case scenario,” Alex says quietly. “They would have bumped you back to the top of the list of suspects in Coralee’s case.”

“Exactly.”

She’s still not comfortable with the idea of Strand pulling a move like that to keep himself out of this case, but what’s done is done. They can only hope this secret stays buried, unlike everything else from Strand’s past.

“Okay, if Thomas Warren is dead,” She speaks up after a brief pause, struggling to keep up with the hundreds of questions her brain is formulating at a breakneck pace. “Then who the hell stole your coffee? Who’s been Thomas Warren for the last eighteen years? And why haven’t I heard of this before? Shouldn’t there have been a body, a case, a death certificate?”

Strand gestures at the multitude of newspaper clippings, blurry photographs and various other potential clues that litter his walls and every available surface in his office. “That’s what I’d like to know.” He says simply, offering her no actual answers. Maybe he has none.

His eyes are not pleading, but she gets the gist of the message he’s hoping to communicate without actually having to say the words – again. Never mind that he’d openly asked for her help in front of Ruby just minutes ago. Alex registers a faint sense of irritation - at Strand’s pride and this whole situation and the heaviness that’s suddenly starting to weigh on her eyelids.

“And you want my help.”

She doesn’t mean to cross her arms and level Strand with a calculating look, but sleep deprivation does a pretty good job of ridding her of diplomacy and tact and she just can’t believe the _nerve_ of him, choosing to let her back into his life after three months of radio silence just because he’s hit a dead end on his own.

At least he has the decency to look sheepish – well, as sheepish as Strand can manage. “I was hoping you could help me, yes.”

Of course she’s going to help him, but Alex figures she has the right to make him sweat… just for a bit. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registers the muffled shriek of warning bells going off. Flying out to Chicago, going behind Ruby’s back, sneaking into Strand’s office – she’s been running on a curious mix of adrenaline, frustration and concern. Now that that’s wearing off, exhaustion is slowly seeping into her bones and slowing down her thought process, allowing her to give in to her emotions and behave with those in mind, instead of burying her personal feelings and reacting as a journalist.

Her voice sounds cold even to her own ears. “To find Thomas Warren.”

“Well.” Strand doesn’t take well to the change in her demeanor, and retaliates by shrugging on his usual cool, collected composure like armor. “Yes, that… and one other thing.”

Alex savors the way he startles at the harsh sound of her chair scraping against the floor as she gets to her feet. Her best bet at staying awake right now is to get up and start pacing around, and so she does just that. She can’t imagine Strand is pleased by the way she turns her back to him as he talks, barely acknowledging his words as she approaches his walls for a closer look.

“I can’t have anyone knowing that I’m onto Thomas Warren, whoever he may be. Of course, no one would believe that we’ve decided to stop looking into this matter altogether. I think the best thing would be for you to keep digging, but you should make it sound like we’re a few steps behind. Only report on leads I’ve already checked out, or ones that lead to a dead-end. And I trust it goes without saying that there should be no mention at all of what happened in 1998.”

These sound more like orders than suggestions.

Alex doesn’t dignify them with a response, choosing instead to offer Strand a non-committal hum without turning her focus away from a profile on Thomas Warren, way back from 1996. Two years before his death… or something.

Another article, this time an interview with the man himself, is pinned side by side with the 1996 profile. This one is more recent, a rare sit-down interview with the reclusive Thomas Warren in 2013. Strand has circled certain lines and stained others with fluorescent highlighters – there’s probably a pattern there, some sort of logic behind the sentences he’s chosen.

She should ask him. She should behave like an adult and a professional and someone who isn’t confused by the mixed bag of emotions Strand inspires in her.

“Alex?”

Somehow, she completely missed Strand getting up and crossing the office to stand by her side. By the time she registers his presence, he’s right next to her – closer than he’s been since he entered the office, closer than he’s been in three months.

Up close, she can see the weariness lurking in his usually sharp eyes.

“You look like hell,” Alex blurts out unthinkingly.

Strand breathes a half-laugh, and it’s only now that she realizes how much she’s missed that sound. “So do you,” He retorts teasingly, but his grin is quickly replaced by a concerned frown.

“Are you okay?”

 _No_ , she wants to snap. _No, I’m_ not _okay because I haven’t slept in months and you’ve been gone and demons might be real and I’ve been so worried-_

She finds herself speechless when Strand reaches out to ghost a feather-light touch under her eyes, brows drawn together as he traces out what she knows is a circle so dark it looks more like a bruise than an under-eye bag.

“Alex…” Strand sighs, almost sadly. He brushes his fingers over her cheek, and she can’t help the way her eyes close at the familiar sensation of him tracing her jawline with the pads of his fingers.

With her eyes shut, she can vividly recall the way he would slide his fingers into her hair, the way his forehead would press against hers right before their lips met, the way her skin would simultaneously burn and tingle as his stubble scratched-

It takes Alex’s sleep-deprived mind a moment to catch up to the fact that Strand is kissing her. The burn of scratchy facial hair is unfamiliar and foreign, even as his free hand comes to rest on her waist and his fingers curl into her side the way they always do. She wonders if the kiss would have felt this strange even if Strand had been clean-shaven, if these months apart have created some sort of distance a kiss can’t quite bridge.

She stretches to link her hands around the back of his neck, and the motion pulls at her shirt to expose a sliver of skin. His fingers press a scalding brand into her side, and he swallows the muffled yelp she squeaks out at the burning sensation of his warm hand pressed against her cool skin.

When they finally part for breath, she isn’t even surprised to find her back against the wall and her legs around his middle.

Their foreheads remain pressed together, and they’re close enough to trade the same breath of air back and forth.

“I’m sorry,” Strand whispers.

She opens her eyes, ready to greet him with a smile and forgiveness for the past three months and _it’s okay, it’s all okay now_ even though it shouldn’t be that easy.

But of course it isn’t that easy.

“I’m sorry,” He says again, louder this time. She barely has time to question the tension in his jaw as Strand sets her down and quickly pulls away from her to put some distance between them. “We,” He runs a hand through his hair, trying to undo the damage she’s done. “I shouldn’t have-” His glasses are slightly askew, and he pushes them back into place. “That was unprofessional of me.”

A knot forms in her stomach even as she laughs him off. “Richard, don’t be ridiculous. It’s not like we haven’t-” _done so much more_ , _so many times_.

“I know,” He cuts her off with a pained look in his eyes, lips set into a thin line. She finally identifies the knot in her stomach, now fully formed, as _dread_. “But we shouldn’t anymore.”

And what can she say or do to protest the end of something they’d never even thought to acknowledge out loud? Nights spent having dinner together while their bodies hummed with anticipation and their eyes gleamed with unspoken agreement, mornings spent sharing a bathroom while they studiously ignored _why_ they’d both woken up together - nothing built on that kind of foundation can last.

“I… see.”

Strand steps forward, reaches out as if to take her hands in his own. He stops just short of invading her personal space. “You do, don’t you? Things are getting complicated, Alex, and I can’t afford to-” His voice falters. _To what,_ Alex wants to demand, but she has a feeling she already knows the answer.

“ _We_ can’t afford to,” She agrees, because he has a point, because who knows what they’re about to get themselves into, because the last thing they need right now is to add personal complications into this already tangled mess of missing wives and dead-but-not-dead coffee thieves and on top of all that, possible demons. And also because she really, really doesn’t want to drag this out.

“Right.” His shoulders sag – not with relief, but with resignation.

“Right,” Alex echoes, smoothing down the front of her shirt. She’ll think about this later. She’ll think about the reluctant look in his eyes and the rest of that unfinished sentence and the short time they had together– all of this, she can think about when she’s far, far away from Richard Strand.

For now, she leads the way back to his desk and sits down with her back ramrod straight and her mind completely focused on work. She retrieves her recorder from the corner of the table as Strand lowers himself into his chair.

“Misdirection, right? That’s what you suggested?”

Strand merely nods, trying – and failing – to mask his surprise at her decision to help him after all.

“Alright, so here’s what we’re going to do.”

She outlines the conversation they’ll have, gives him a few things to say to make her conflict more believable. Strand plays his part perfectly, right down to his impatience and frustration when he demands to know whether or not she will help him.

Alex is the one who almost ruins it all.

“Why don’t you get Ruby to help?” She asks as planned, giving him the perfect opening to tell anyone and everyone listening that his staff isn’t involved in this and should be left alone.

“I’d like her to keep clear of any of this,” So far, so good. But then: “You and I…” Strand scrambles to add to the bare bones of the bullet points she’s given him. What he’s _supposed_ to do is let everyone know that she’s the only one helping him. What he does instead is open a whole new can of worms by saying “we have a…” and then, at a loss for words, trailing off in a manner that might seem suggestive to some.

“Yeah.” Alex quickly cuts in before he can say something stupid or revealing, before _she_ can say something stupid or revealing like _we **had** , until five minutes ago_.

“So you’ll do it?” Strand makes a triumphant return to the script.

Alex curses her inability to let things go, to leave people to their own business, to say no to Strand.

“Yes, I’ll do it.”

 

 

 

He arranges for a car to take her back to her hotel, and then for another one to send her to the airport later that night. The trip had been very last-minute, and she’d never planned on staying the night, not with prep work and pre-production for Season 2 waiting for her, along with a promise to record some lines for Nic’s show and a few meetings to prepare for before the executive producers arrive in Seattle the day after tomorrow.

So she’s glad to leave Chicago on schedule, as planned, having accomplished everything she came here to do without taking too much time out of her packed schedule.

She’s glad to head home to a hectic week filled with endless meetings and interviews and all kinds of other distractions.

She’s glad she doesn’t have the time to think about the reluctant look in Strand’s eyes that day in his office and the rest of that unfinished sentence and the short time they had together. It’s not like they ever had anything real to begin with, not like there’s anything for her to mourn anyway.

 

 

 

The next time Strand calls, she does her part by ‘updating’ him on information that isn’t news to either of them and he pretends to be frustrated by her lack of progress and takes it out on her by faking impatience and annoyance. 

It’s only when he hangs up without so much as a _goodbye_ that Alex begins to wonder how much of their conversation was an act.

**Author's Note:**

> So this started out as what was supposed to be a nice little ficlet about that secret conversation we didn't get to hear, maybe with a dose of angsty ship reunion.
> 
> And then it got out of control. I'm sorry.
> 
> Here, [have some drunk Christmas Eve texts from Alex.](http://esalvatore3.tumblr.com/post/140030092759/off-the-record-bonus-material)


End file.
